Say what you will, this is both funny and spot on.
Daily Archives: August 1, 2017
Dusting off a meme
You gotta love this Gridiron Now post that’s all Danger, Will Robinson! about Georgia’s opener against Appy State for burying the lede in the last paragraph.
The 2007 Appalachian State team that knocked off Michigan went on to win a third consecutive FCS title, helping catapult the program toward FBS status. Since starting the transition to college football’s highest level in 2013, the Mountaineers have yet to ambush another Power Five conference team, losing at Georgia in 2013, in a return to Michigan in 2014, at Clemson in 2015 and to Tennessee and Miami last season. [Emphasis added.]
Hey, look, Nicholls gave Georgia a game last year, any given Saturday, yada, yada, yada… I get it. But to pretend that a Sun Belt team that’s yet to beat a P5 program presents an existential crisis because of a ten-year old upset is really straining to make a mountain out of a molehill. Just ask Georgia’s 2013 team.
Filed under Georgia Football, Media Punditry/Foibles
Making Georgia football great again
Kirby Smart wasn’t buying that “but we’re Georgia, damn it!” stuff when he was hired.
“When we got here I knew,” Smart said. “I coached against the University of Georgia. I recruited against the University of Georgia. I pretty much knew what was here.”
And then this critical sentence Kirby said that no one else would dare say in front of a podium over the last few years – and very few people would write or say out loud.
“I knew the level of expectation didn’t necessarily meet the quality of players that were here.”
Ouch.
Now there are two things to say in response to that, assuming, of course, that you take it at face value. One, no surprise, roster management did in Mark Richt. There was a dry stretch in recruiting, culminating in the disaster of 2013, that lasted until the 2015 class, from which the program is still recovering. You don’t have to have coached or recruited against Georgia to realize that.
Two, despite that, it’s only fair to note that Mark Richt won 19 games in 2014 and 2015. You can bitch, moan and qualify that all you want based on the level of opposition, the losses to Florida and whatever else tickles your fancy, but purely on a wins and losses basis, Richt did a good job coaching the talent he left himself. (If you don’t believe that, go count the number of football teams that managed that many wins over that two-year period.) Certainly, he got better results than Smart achieved last season.
I mention this not to support or attack either coach, but rather to analyze McGarity’s stated rationale for changing head coaches. If Georgia football had plateaued, I would argue that it was because of the way Richt had gone about accumulating talent. Smart has clearly upgraded the program in that department.
As Legge notes, though, even under Richt, that flaw had begun a correction course.
It must be pointed out that since Mark Richt’s final recruiting class, the 2015 class, things started to pick up. In that class a slew of very gifted players were signed and have been solid players ever since… Terry Godwin, Roquan Smith, Trent Thompson, Natrez Patrick, Jonathon Ledbetter.
Richt would have brought in a good 2016 class, too, had he lasted. That’s water under the bridge at this point, but bringing all the talent in the world to Athens means little in the long run if you can’t coach ’em up. The jury is still out on Smart as to that. In that regard, history says that Georgia coaches tend to improve their teams’ won-loss records significantly in their second seasons. Let’s hope that plays out again this year. Otherwise, all McGarity’s done is trade one plateau for another.
Filed under Georgia Football, Recruiting
He fought the law. And the law won.
The NCAA, keeping the college world safe from players earning money:
UCF kicker Donald De La Haye has been ruled ineligible after he refused to give in to the NCAA’s demand for him to stop monetizing his popular YouTube channel.
De La Haye, a junior kickoff specialist, has a YouTube channel with over 90,000 subscribers that has amassed nearly five million total views. The NCAA took issue with the fact that the videos bring in advertising revenue and said he was no longer allowed to make money off his athletics-related videos if he wanted to continue playing college football. UCF lobbied the NCAA to allow De La Haye to continue to profit off his channel provided he did not collect any revenue from videos related to athletics. The NCAA approved those conditions but De La Haye declined to move his sports-related videos to a non-monetized account and the school suspended him to avoid a conflict with the NCAA.
All this over, what… a couple grand a month, maybe? So much for getting student-athletes ready for the day when they go out in the real world to make a living.
In any event, the NCAA took De La Haye’s defiance very, very seriously. I know that because Stacey Osburn emerged from her secluded “no comment” cocoon to issue a very, very serious qualification.
Meaningless ass covering, for the win. The NCAA is just an innocent bystander in all this, y’all.
Amateurism lives to fight another day. What a relief.
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UPDATE: I wasn’t expecting this reaction.
Filed under It's Just Bidness, The NCAA
It’s not quite four tickets, four hot dogs and four Cokes…
… mainly because it’s not an official offering from the school, but check out the deal you can get for Ole Miss tickets.
Note the fine print: “Official Fan Package sets the ticket price and because pricing is subject to the forces of supply and demand, the price may be above or below face value.”
Translation: it’s a buyer’s market, folks.
(h/t)
Filed under Freeze!
Tuesday morning buffet
Opening day of practice means there are plenty of tidbits to share:
- Get ‘yer new players’ jersey numbers here.
- Booch on new graduate transfer Shaq Wiggins: “I love Shaq, but Shaq’s got a long way to go in terms of the intangibles, our practice habits, our style of play, working through some things,” Jones said. “But I know this about Shaq: He’s very prideful, he’s very willing and he wants to do it.” It’s the beginning of a bee-yoo-tee-full friendship, I tells ‘ya.
- In case you didn’t get the subtle message, Akhil Crumpton’s been assigned Isaiah McKenzie’s number 16.
- It’s the first day of practice, so of course the quotes reflect the usual hunger, happy talk and anti-hype.
- If you think fall practice is starting earlier than before, you’re not alone. It’s the fallout from the new two-a-days ban. Many coaches are unhappy about that, and, surprisingly, they have a point.
- Roll ‘Bama Roll grades the SEC’s non-conference schedules. Not surprisingly, ‘Bama is graded on a bit of a curve, but overall, pretty solid analysis.
- Player weights here. Note that Chubb and Michel have dropped a few pounds.
- Read the comments about how Georgia would have used 2018 o-line commit Warren Ericson five years ago versus now.
Get The Picture 